LAPD Unit a Death Squad, Suit Alleges : Son of Man Killed by Police Claims Civil Rights Were Violated

A 6-year-old boy whose father was shot to death by Los Angeles police after he robbed a bank in Burbank seven years ago has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the department and several officials charging that his unarmed father was executed by a police death squad.

John H. Crumpton IV is seeking $10 million in damages in the suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The suit names Mayor Tom Bradley, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, four previous chiefs, several members of the Police Commission and 12 officers in the special investigations section.

The suit claims that the SIS is a “death squad” whose officers routinely allow criminal suspects that they follow to commit crimes and then open fire on them while making arrests. The suit asks that the SIS be disbanded or placed under court supervision.

Linked to 5 Robberies

According to the suit and court records, Crumpton’s father, John H. Crumpton III, and mother, Jane E. Berry, 36, robbed a Security Pacific Bank in Burbank on Sept. 15, 1982. At the time, the couple had been linked to five bank robberies in the San Fernando Valley and were being followed by SIS officers.

After the robbery of the Security Pacific Bank, four SIS officers surprised Berry, who was armed, and Crumpton, who was not, and ordered them to halt. When the suspects turned in the officers’ direction, according to police reports, the officers fired 18 times, killing Crumpton and wounding Berry. Berry, who was pregnant with John H. Crumpton IV, never drew her weapon.

The lawsuit, filed by Stephen Yagman, an attorney specializing in civil rights cases who has often sued the Los Angeles Police Department, charges that Crumpton was shot in the back and murdered. The wrongful slaying of Crumpton deprived his son of his civil rights to have a father and family, the suit says.

“We don’t have a death squad despite what the suit says,” Cmdr. William Booth, LAPD spokesman, said. “I suspect the suit sprang from a piece of magnificent fiction that was in the Los Angeles Times a year ago. We do have an SIS unit, and we think it is a very worthwhile unit.”

Yagman said a guardian of John H. Crumpton IV contacted him about filing the lawsuit after a series of articles on SIS were published by The Times in September, 1988.

An investigation by the newspaper found that the secretive 19-man unit watches suspected armed robbers and burglars and routinely ignores opportunities to make arrests for lesser crimes. Instead, the SIS officers do not move in to make arrests until after the suspects commit actual armed robberies and burglaries--felonies that carry lengthy sentences and are more easily prosecuted because SIS officers can testify as witnesses.